Food, Home & Lifestyle

Tortellini Part 1: Broth and Sauce

Lesson time 11:42 min

In the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, tortellini is the quintessential dish. Massimo shows you how to make the two classic tortellini accompaniments: il brodo, the rich, delicious broth, and a Parmigiano-Reggiano cream sauce.

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Topics include: Making the Broth • Using Salt to Set the Flavor • Making the Parmigiano-Reggiano Cream Sauce

Massimo Bottura

Teaches Modern Italian Cooking

Massimo Bottura teaches you his take on traditional Italian cooking—from risotto to tortellini—and shares techniques for reimagining your own recipes.

Preview

[MUSIC PLAYING] MASSIMO BOTTURA (VOICEOVER): In Emilia-Romagna, we eat the tortellini two different ways-- in broth or in a cream sauce. In this chapter, we're going to show you how to make il brodo, the rich, delicious broth, and the Parmigiano-Reggiano cream sauce. We'll show you how to make the tortellini in the next chapter. [MUSIC PLAYING] - My friends, today we're going to use-- we're going to make brodo, il brodo, a rich broth. We use a free range chicken. Daka is cutting down, first, the two legs, no feet, also, the finishing of the wings. The neck is there. We're going to cut down the head. So we start with the torch to burn every single little, you know, imperfection, and clean the skin. We put the neck inside. Once we finish everything with the torch, the chicken has to be put in the water. Cool. And so we're going to start like that. And then here, we have beef, like a la costa. So it's a rib with-- you know, this is very gelatinous and perfect flavor for broth. And we're going to put it in-- even this in cold water. Then, as you see, we open the sweet onion, and we burn on the top of the pan to give flavor and to give-- to add flavor and to give a little bit of color to the broth. And Daka is fixing carrots and celery together, and they're going to go inside. Yeah. Some bay leaf, a couple of bay leaves. good. So you do notice that we didn't add anything except essential flavor, like bay leaves, instead of, you know, thyme, rosemary, or something, because we want to keep the flavor very pure. We're going to-- we are extracting, you know, the flavor from this amazing chicken, and we're going to serve and use the broth for the tortellini. If you want to maybe have-- you know, use a chicken broth for something, you know, like, for example, like lamb dumpling, you could put a lot of thyme and extract the flavor of the thyme that is matching perfectly with lamb. You know, but in this case, you know, we want pureness. We want to give you the perfect example how pureness it is. And for me, as flavors, we kept very simple-- just the bay leaves. One thing that you cannot miss in a broth like this is the Parmigiano-Reggiano crust. It's something that is so traditional and add to the flavor some incredible umami. Umami is a savory richness. We clean the old crust on the outside. We dip into the water, and now it's time to start. You know, very slow temperature. We don't want the broth boiling. We just want to extract very gentle all the flavors. We forget about this for two, three-- between two and three hours, you know, to reduce at least 30% of the water. And you can prepare a broth once a week, maybe even once a month. And then you can put a vacuum bag or in, you know, those plastic bags, and froze portion per portion. So when you need it, you can heat it up and serve it. The only thing we really care-- to keep the broth very clear. So every five, 10 minutes, you go through that, and you take off all the im...

About the Instructor

Massimo Bottura, chef of the three-Michelin-star Osteria Francescana, treats his world-renowned restaurant as a laboratory of ideas. In his MasterClass, he shares how he transforms classic, regional Italian recipes into exciting modern dishes. You’ll learn how to make rich, flavorful tagliatelle al ragù, pumpkin risotto, and a MasterClass-exclusive Emilia Burger recipe. Develop your palate and embark on a culinary adventure.

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Massimo Bottura

Massimo Bottura teaches you his take on traditional Italian cooking—from risotto to tortellini—and shares techniques for reimagining your own recipes.

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